


Broken Throne of the Melancholy Beach

by AmateurScribes



Series: Bad Things Happen (to Grif) Bingo [1]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Abandonment, Gen, Hallucinations, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Neglect, Self Confidence Issues, Self-Hatred
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-03
Updated: 2018-09-03
Packaged: 2019-07-06 14:30:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15887922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmateurScribes/pseuds/AmateurScribes
Summary: He sits on the beach looking at the waves and up at the sky for the ships that won't turn around.He sits on the beach against his broken throne.





	Broken Throne of the Melancholy Beach

**Author's Note:**

> So I'm participating in the Bad Things Happen Bingo, of which I'm aiming to complete the entire board, and this is the first prompt I received! I'm open to prompts at any time and you can look at my post explaining how I'm taking prompts on my Tumblr!

He watches them leave and their ships, but it's not like he gives a shit. They're leaving him, not the other way around. He doesn't care.

It's not like he left his cave to see them go. He doesn't care, he doesn't feel anything knowing that they won't turn their ships around and admit that he was right. Because he's in the right, not them.

Grif doesn't care about them: he doesn't care about Sarge or Tucker or Donut or Caboose or Wash or Carolina or Lopez. Or Simmons.

He _doesn't_ care.

He's pretty sure he doesn't care.

But he goes down to the beach to sit on the sand and just _wait._ The waves lap against his armored boots and he can taste the salt on the breeze, his helmet pressed deep in the sand. He doesn't know what he's waiting for.

"Why Church," he asks once. His hair loose and wild cascading down his back. "Why is it _always_ Church?"

Nobody answers him back.

Nobody can hear his unspoken, _Why is it never me?_

On a different day, the sun is setting and getting swallowed up by the waves, a calm ripple amongst them. It's cold by the beach, but he doesn't shiver because he's wearing his armor. His helmet is pressed deep in the sand.

"I explored the moon a bit more," he mutters to nobody. "There's not a lot of places to relax around, too quiet. At least here I can hear the water."

Silence is his only audience.

"I'm rationing out the food that's in the fridge," he clenches his hands in the sand, some of it slipping out. "I don't know if they'll send, ya know, more over now that all of you are gone. Just being on the safe side, ya know?"

He leaves his helmet buried in the sand, it's not like he's going to use it again. He's retired.

It's only him on the moon. It's only him on Iris.

He doesn't care.

He starts to care a little bit when he gets agitated being alone. So he cleans the base. He cleans Blue Base.

He hates cleaning.

He cleans and then settles back down on the beach.

He hates the beach.

"When are you assholes, coming back, huh?" He clenches his fist and throws some sand towards the waves that nip at the shore. He blows back slightly, not in his face thankfully.

He would have preferred it to smack against his face. He could pretend like someone else is there.

There's no one there. He's alone on the beach.

He's alone on the moon. He's alone on Iris.

"Well, I don't need you fucking assholes," he boasts. He rises up off of what he has decided would be _his_ place on the beach, like a king rising up out of his throne in a deserted kingdom. With nothing but himself and the throne. With nothing but himself and the beach.

"I fucking hate all of you anyways," he proclaims. "You've been nothing but a nuisance on my life. A fucking blemish on what would have otherwise been a fucking _normal_ life."

 _A fucked up life,_ the waves whisper back at him. _Your mother abandoned you and your sister is dead. She would have left you too._

"You don't know that," he growls back, stumbling towards the shore. "You don't know _anything_ about me."

 _Her body is rotting in her armor,_ the waves begin to thrash, becoming angrier as the conversation progresses. _A good brother would have gone back for her. Would have buried her._

"She's not dead," he walks into the water, going so far as to go knee deep. "She's _not_ fucking dead."

 _You're not a good brother,_ it taunts. _You've never been a good brother._

"Shut. Up," he glares down, the waving moving back and forth.

There's no one there, he knows this.

It's just him alone on the moon. It's just him alone with the water on Iris.

 _Your mother left you, and then you left Kai,_ he whispers, as if it held some sort of secret confession within its depths. _You left her for college, and then for war, and war again, and again._

"I didn't have a fucking choice," Grif argues. He didn't want to leave Kai. He's not his mother.

 _You did, you did, you did, you did,_ the waves thrash against his legs. _You left her and then you left her dead body._

He kicks at the waves, splashing water upwards. It glimmered like stars against the setting sun. The drips as it fell back down into the source was just laughter echoing against the empty moon.

The Reds and Blues left him. He didn't abandon them. They're wrong. He's right.

He doesn't care.

He's alone on the moon.

And the water is up to his chest now. He moved further into the ocean.

His helmet was pressed deep into the sand.

The water is at his chin now, his hair was getting soaked by the waves.

 _You left your sister for dead,_ it sings like a lullaby. _Your mother is dead, it's better that she's dead with drugs in her veins than the thought that she's living her life much happier without children holding her down._

He doesn't care.

 _Without you there,_ the waves sound somber. _She loved your sister, but you tainted raising children for her._

He's alone on the moon.

His helmet was pressed deep into the sand. His helmet was abandoned on the beach.

Grif was abandoned on the moon.

Grif was abandoned the moment his mother realized how rotten he was.

He left Kai dead in her suit.

He's not a good brother.

The water is at his chin but he feels like he can't breathe.

He doesn't open his mouth to say anything else, the water would rush in and it wouldn't stop.

No one would care.

He chose this.

It's just Grif alone on Iris with nothing but the waves and the helmet he abandoned in the sand.

He wants to take a few more steps to bury his head in the water, to suffocate with water rushing into his lungs.

No one would care.

Grif doesn't care.

But something stops him, Simmons hand against his bicep pulls him back towards the beach.

The last glimmer of sunlight glitters and reflects across his visor, half buried in the sand.

Simmons doesn't say anything, and he's wearing his helmet.

The water is silent. Simmons is silent. Grif is silent.

 _Come back to the shore,_ Simmons pleads.

 _Come to me,_ the waves tempt.

He looks out at the blank expanse of the ocean. The murky black water doesn't look nearly as peaceful as it had all the days he sat on the beach. The days he settled down and waited for something he didn't even know what he wanted. The days he settled against his broken throne amidst a ruined kingdom with the only residents being him and the waves.

He doesn't want to turn around.

Simmons isn't actually there.

His arm gets tugged again, the water moving away from the broken king.

There's no one else on this moon. There's no one waiting for him back at the base.

He chose this, he chose to be alone on the moon.

The ocean doesn't have a name. The beach doesn't have a name.

The Reds and Blues hadn't named the island, hadn't named anything.

Iris wasn't meant to replace their gulch, their home, it wasn't meant to be their home.

They were never meant to stay on Iris.

Grif stayed on Iris. Grif stayed on the moon.

The Reds and Blues abandoned him. He would never equal Church in their eyes.

They would choose one over the other, let Grif go as if keeping him around physically hurt them.

Grif is always getting abandoned. His mother left for the circus, ditching her children as if the life of being a public embarrassment would be any better. Grif was forced to leave Kai, too caught up in the military to back out, unable to back out, sent to die on a colony.

Grif was the only one alive on the colony a month into his deployment. There were no beaches, there were no waves to lap at his chin and tempt him into walking until he could see nothing but the murky depths of the blackened water.

It's a nice night. It's quiet and it calms him. Simmons is tugging on his arm again, and the waves lap at his face.

No one would miss Grif, his sister was dead and she was rotting in her armor.

He wished his mother was dead, with some drug left in her body.

He wished he was dead.

Simmons tugs at his arm.

He doesn't say, "Ok, ok _fine_ I'm going back to shore."

The water would rush into his mouth and fill up his lungs and there would be no point in going back to shore.

So he turns around and wades his way through the water.

He feels the waves try to pull him back, but he pushes against its grip.

He makes it back to the shore.

And collapses on the part of the beach that he claimed as _his._

He collapses on his broken throne, with an empty kingdom of nobody but himself and the beach and the waves and Iris.

And he waits, to see if the planes would break through the atmosphere as if they had changed their mind.

He doesn't care.

He'll repeat the process tomorrow.

Tomorrow he might succumb further into the waves.

He doesn't care.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm going to enjoy the heck out of doing this, so I hope more people send in prompts!
> 
> My Tumblrs are: @agent-murica (main) and @amateurscribes (writing), but I'm taking prompts only one my main one!


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